The overall purpose of the Administrative Core is to help ensure the success of our COBRE grant supported investigators focused to determine mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases and to identify possible treatments for these devastating illnesses. In the context of the current fight funding environment, success depends on many factors including having access to adequate space that is designed to facilitate interactions and foster excellent science, excellent mentorship, access to modern technologies, and having a nucleus of researchers with whom to collaborate. Thus, we view a concerted human effort as being essential to building further our research enterprise. Accordingly, the Administrative Core will support many essential aspects of our group's activities including (1) maintaining a centralized ordering, grant accounting and cost center system, (2) supporting our pilot research grant program, (3) supporting our mass spectrometry and imaging core facilities and their associated cost centers, (4) training investigators in how best to take advantage of the advanced technologies available to them in our Cores, (5) supporting our visiting speaker seminar series, (6) supporting specific neuroscience-related School of Medicine and Health Sciences library acquisitions, (7) organizing our annual neuroscience symposium, (8) fostering annual meetings between the three North Dakota COBRE grant supported groups and collaborations between individuals in the respective groups, and (9) supporting mentorship programs for which members of our Internal Advisory Committee and our External Advisory Board play active roles. As part of our mentorship program we will have regular meetings focusing on science, scientific collaborations, faculty-orientated survival skills, grant writing, and obtaining funding to build individual and group success. We are confident that our junior and mid-level faculty will, as a result of such committed interactions, advance their careers, increasingly publish, increasingly receive grant funding, and ultimately build this neurodegenerative disease research group to one of increased international prominence.